3 ms·

I can't be the first person to think that trying to do the "every possible situation, individually" thing is stupid. Why no focus on e.g. a top down federal "s

• jboy55 3y ago
  I always felt there would be 'carpool'/express lanes that would just be for automatic driving cars. They would communicate with each other and so they could pack together really tightly. You'd enter your destination, then drive you car to the point that you enter the lanes, then the car would take over. It would warn before your exit, then you'd take over.
  • bandyaboot 3y ago
    I would like to see such a system installed at a high volume intersection. When the light turns green the system instructs all the cars lined up to accelerate simultaneously. The motivation isn’t necessarily practicality, just pure entertainment value.
    • dghlsakjg 3y ago
      That’s called a streetcar normally.
    • dgunay 3y ago
      Honestly I wish people would just do that. It doesn't have to be in perfect lockstep but it significantly increases the amount of backed-up traffic you can get through the light in one cycle if everyone does that.
      • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        One reason super high traffic cities will probably be the first ones to mandate self driving cars will be to optimize limited road infrastructure. Surely Beijing and Shanghai would go for it, they already have what Americans would consider drastic rules that limit when you can drive your own car (like even odd days based on your license plate number).
      • bandyaboot 3y ago
        Now that I think about it, cars’ existing adaptive cruise technology could probably be extended to accomplish something fairly close.
  • judge2020 3y ago
    Another benefit could be to have extremely fast lanes instead of more packed-together lanes. With good enough coordination, or a block zone system like trains[/roller coaster trains], you could achieve >120mph cruising. With both of these possibilities though, the requirements are generally that the car completely takes over driving with no way for the human to assume manual control to break the system or otherwise create an unsafe situation for other road users.
    • aqfamnzc 3y ago
      We are getting closer and closer to inventing Trains™
      • preordained 3y ago
        That's really not fair here. These would be trains you could bolt onto highways, and "transform" them back into cars as needed.
        • jrm4 3y ago
          In a way, even easier? Why not just get on the interstate, bolt cars together. Then you're also saving on gas.
• mulmen 3y ago
  That’s the idea GM had way back in 1958: https://youtu.be/cPOmuvFostY https://youtu.be/cPOmuvFostY. Basically ATC for a high speed self driving lane.
• School-Cotton 3y ago
  The US is functionally ungovernable due to its political structure, so the federal government can’t really just “do things” that are that ambitious, even if they make sense. If something like that happened at all it would probably be in China.
  • jrm4 3y ago
    You should read more? We've already done railroad, long distance telephone and arguably the internet.
    • dghlsakjg 3y ago
      None of which are from this century, and our railroad system is… not an example of good governance in its creation or in its current management.
• CSMastermind 3y ago
  Why do it on public roads? There are oil fields in North Dakota where a lot of driving needs to be done and corporations could completely control that environment. Why not automate cargo ships? There's far less to hit in the ocean and far fewer inputs required. Why still have human pilots in airplanes when they're largely automated?
  • doublespanner 3y ago
    It's all about the cost of a driver relative to the activity and risk; with taxis it's a much higher proportion than it is for aeroplanes.
    • CSMastermind 3y ago
      If we wanted to make roads as safe as possible why not equip every vehicle with a breathalyzer that blocks the vehicles ignition if the driver isn't sober? Or use GPS to limit the speed of vehicles to the speed limit that's been set? For that matter why allow the sale of vehicles capable of exceeding 85 miles per hour (the highest speed limit anywhere in the country)?
      • doublespanner 3y ago
        Did you intend to reply to me? The reason we are trialing these systems on public roads is because that is where they must operate in order to make sense. It's not about safety alone. To respond to your tangent: Breathalyzers are not all that reliable, nor is GPS localisation... And a national speed limit would mostly reduce revenue (not to mention the new problems regarding who is liable for maintaining the limit correctly). There is a great history of implementing practical safety requirements, maybe not the first globally, but when it becomes practical to adopt something we generally do.
  • neysofu 3y ago
    > Why not automate cargo ships? There's far less to hit in the ocean and far fewer inputs required. Maneuvering a ship is but a very small part of all that's needed to maintain a ship operational – engine maintenance, paperwork, dealing with port agents and customs, operating the radio, etc.. Much of that can be automated, I'm sure, but the return on investment is quite poor. Crew salaries are a small part of all operations costs, so you're not saving much by removing them from the equation. (Add to that the fact that large cargo ships can exceed $1B worth of cargo, so I'm not surprised that the economics don't make much sense.)